To keep Montrealers supplied with their world-famous bagels, fresh and warm from the oven, St-Viateur Bagel needs a steady supply of high-quality flour, sugar, eggs, honey, toppings such as sesame seeds, and plenty of firewood. It also needs bakers – and this last essential ingredient can be the hardest to find.

On the final day of Bakery Showcase in Montreal, St-Viateur Bagel co-owner Vince Morena joined Joseph Sabatier, co-owner of Montreal neighbourhood bakery chain Mamie Clafoutis, and Éric Côté, vice-president and general manager of Première Moisson, to discuss the challenges facing bakeries that are struggling to develop la rélève, or the next generation.

The speakers acknowledged that the relatively long training process, the long hours, the early mornings, the way students and their families perceive manual jobs and the lack of visibility of baking in pop culture might hurt recruitment efforts, and that tightening immigration restrictions and small training program cohorts made it harder to fill open positions.

“It’s a difficult job: you have to work impossible hours, and it’s not really sexy,” said Côté, who developed a popular artisanal baking program in partnership with the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec, Quebec’s public college for the hotel and restaurant trades. “We are in competition with all the other professions in the food world, when it comes to attracting young people. As an industry, we have the challenge of showing them how exciting it can be, and also all the possibilities.”

Sabatier said he sometimes did “career day” baking demonstrations in primary schools. “If an architect comes and talks to the kids about bridges, and I come and talk about bread, I win every time, because bread is something they can touch and take home with them. But after [primary school], these kinds of [manual] professions aren’t really promoted.”

The panellists emphasized the importance of showing future bakers that the job can be varied, and that young people who decide they don’t want to spend their whole career in the kitchen can take on management, purchasing or research and development roles within the same bakery. “All of our managers started as bakers or drivers,” said Morena, whose chain of bagel shops is entering its third generation and its seventh decade. “We always look within the business before hiring externally, because our people know the product.”

Côté said Première Moisson had begun to run “innovation contests” to encourage employees to explore their creative side and develop new products. Beyond the artistic aspect, Coté said baking is a “super passport” – a skillset which can lead to job opportunities around the world for adventurous young people.

“There are TV shows about pastry. There are TV shows about [restaurant] cooking. Have you already seen a show about baking? I haven’t,” Sabatier said. “It’s not a job where you start and then in three months, you’ll be a baker. You’ll have to work, and it’ll be a long time before you become a good baker, an independent baker. But when you leave, you have pride in your heart. You start with a living, raw material, flour, and you go through all the steps and you transform it in a matter of hours. There are very few professions where you can do that – and those professions, I think they’re worth keeping alive. Baking is hard, but it’s real.”